Introducing a fun new writer’s resource: A community of beta readers

Hello, writerly friends. This is Emlyn, and there’s a great new writing resource that I just had to share with you. I’ve asked its director to take a moment to share this with you. I hope you enjoy it!/ This is a guest post by Adam Charles/ Are you an aspiring author looking to upload your work, start or continue to build your readership, sell your books online, join a community of like-minded people, connect with readers looking for new stories, receive feedback to help you prove and improve your writing? If the answer to this question is yes then iWriteReadRate is here to help you in your quest, to support you on your journey, and to give you a place to call your own. We're writers just like you, so everything we're doing is with your best interests at heart. We're here to help you navigate the waters of eBook publishing successfully.

We’re launching a new website during April that will enable writers to upload free of charge, sell, and receive valuable feedback on their work direct from their readers. Our core objective is to create a dynamic, constructive, and supportive community of writers and readers of all kinds. It’s about building a democratic and open platform for writers to find their audience to prove and improve their work; but also for readers looking for a wide choice of eBooks- enabling them to interact with authors directly.

About me and iWriteReadRate

My own personal story as an unpublished writer is very much intertwined with The Story of iWriteReadRate. In fact, it is because of my trials and tribulations that the very idea for our new website was born. I’m a life long lover of literature, writing, and all things creative. So in launching our website it is my intention to help other writers and readers discover, interact, and get to know each other in a friendly environment. We believe this is a new dynamic in the writing experience and the relationship between those who have created the work and those who consume it.

A Quick Overview

We’ve thought hard about what features we’d want from our website – as writers and readers ourselves – and tried to pack in as much as we can from the beginning. The site will undoubtedly evolve over time, but we think we’ve got a great basis to develop our offering for indie authors and inquisitive readers even further in the future.

From the beginning, writers will be able to upload five different lengths of work; set a price from a number of options based on the length; receive multiple levels of ratings/reviews; and create an invaluable interaction with their readership.

Readers will be able to read a Writer Bio, eBook Synopsis and Preview for free, and will only be charged to download the full document in PDF or ePub format (Mobi coming later). These eBook formats will mean that downloads are compatible with the vast majority of eReaders, tablets, and smart-phones.

But this is just the beginning. For more information around features, functionality, aims and objectives take a look at our brief FAQs section and our Factoids Blog post.

There’s a great deal in the media at present about Indie Publishing, and we’re extremely positive and optimistic about the future for aspiring authors and writers of all kinds. The rise of motivated, dedicated, and enthusiastic writers, making their own path to improve their work, find their market and grow their own platforms, is an exciting one. Our website is designed with these objectives at the core of what we are doing.

I believe that most writers out there, as long as their work is well written, edited, and presented, will find an enthusiastic audience in the brave new world of eLiterature – it’s simply a matter of finding them. The Internet offers great scope and scale to do just that. Take a look at our recent Blog post on my further thoughts about The eBook Revolution.

We think that one of the most exciting opportunities the uptake of eBooks enables, is a democratization of what is determined to be a successful book, and that the fundamental connectedness of the Internet for the distribution of literary work can only further enhance and enrich The Social Experience of Reading.

Building the Community

Our website also offers advice, support, and connects like-minded writers, readers and literary professionals for the benefit of all of our registered iWriteReadRaters. During the development phase we’ve been growing our contacts and building some useful advice for our members. We interviewed Emlyn this month and we’ve also completed an interview with a Literary Consultant. In addition to this we posted a short Blog article about the importance of self-editing for all writers when sending their work out into the world to be read.

We’re very keen to continue supporting our members, and growing the advice we provide. We will do this through engaging further with experts and feeding their knowledge back to you through our Blog and social networks.

Final Thoughts

It can be daunting to be an aspiring author. Ultimately iWriteReadRate is here to help you progress and develop your passion for literature; to give you an interactive platform for your hard work and ideas.

We think there are a myriad of reasons to join us and use iWriteReadRate, and that everyone will find something that appeals to them. We’re incredibly excited and enthusiastic about the upcoming launch phases, and would be delighted if you joined us from the beginning of this new community of writers and readers.

We’re launching the Beta website during April, and anyone who has pre-registered will be able to upload their work during this phase. Once we have completed Beta testing, we’ll open up the final build of the website for the full launch.

Register for Beta access to our website and to enter our competition to win a Sony Pocket Digital PRS-350 eReader.

In theory I think this is an awesome idea and I’m really excited about the possibilities to connect with writers and improve my own work. However; I can’t help but be cautious when it comes to putting original material on a site like this. Is it copyrighted? What is to prevent anyone from taking/abusing this format?

Many thanks for your positive feedback to my article and our new site.

Yes, when we started building out the idea for iWriteReadRate there were some concerns around Copyright. However, upon investigation we discovered that all original literary works are automatically protected under International Law by various treaties, from the date they are written.

There’s more detail on the Copyright protection for you in the FAQs on our site: https://www.iWriteReadRate.com. There are also some links by country to Intellectual Property arms of the respective governments. Take a look, we think this is pretty robust protection for authors original literary works.

However, I am aware that in the US you can also use a company to privately copyright your work, to add an additional level of protection on top of the international treaties governing copyright for literary works. I saw one which would do this for $35 per submission. As mentioned in our FAQs I’m not sure of how much more this would actually protect your work over and above the copyright you automatically receive.

(I won’t be paying $35 to use these private companies, I’m going to stick with International law governing the automatic rights of authors over their original literary work).

Thanks so much for replying. I’m not paying for a copyright when I already have one automatically! Plus if you really want it you can just file with the LOC. 🙂 Thanks for the info about it being timestamped. Do you upload a secure PDF version? Like a locked file that you can’t copy from? I’m going to bop over and take a look for myself. Thanks again.

If the work is good enough it would be self-destructive for a publisher not to publish it to the mass market just because it’s been on our site. In the end the industry needs to embrace new technology – the change is happening all around us – and our website is ultimately there to help writers on their journey. Publishers shouldn’t be afraid of this, they should embrace it. We think our site has the potential in improve the quality of submissions they receive and potentially illustrate that there is a market for a particular story, which I’m sure they’ll be happy with. They should be expecting that writers need this type of support and encouragement in the very competitive environment of new fiction. Also, they should expect to see it more that motivated, pro-active, aspiring authors are searching out ways of improving their writing and should see this as an extremely positive step in the evolution of writing and publishing.

We’ll be uploading our work from the beginning, so we’re putting our money where our mouth is on this. We think that the benefits of our website significantly outweigh any old-fashioned concerns that it may raise.

Hope to see you on our site as a constructive member of the community.